1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,920 If you've got an NVIDIA graphics card, you may have noticed that the majority of their 2 00:00:03,920 --> 00:00:09,920 driver updates are labeled as game-ready drivers, with the idea being that, in addition to bringing 3 00:00:09,920 --> 00:00:15,280 general updates that benefit everyone, these drivers are optimized for a specific new game 4 00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:21,280 and are released very near or even on the game's launch day. But guess what? With a few exceptions, 5 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:26,320 downloading the latest driver for your graphics card probably isn't going to give you a massive 6 00:00:26,320 --> 00:00:32,240 performance boost, even in that new game. Huh? So what do they actually do? Well, we'll get to that. 7 00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:37,280 But first, a quick history nugget. It turns out this misconception about performance goes all 8 00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:44,160 the way back to the days of the Riva TNT, an NVIDIA product from 1998. There was a famous driver for 9 00:00:44,160 --> 00:00:51,040 the Riva TNT called Detonator. That actually did boost performance significantly due to the inclusion 10 00:00:51,040 --> 00:00:57,840 of optimizations for AMD CPUs that previous drivers lacked. This was great press for NVIDIA, 11 00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:02,480 but unfortunately it ended up setting an expectation that drivers would be some kind 12 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:07,680 of silver bullet for performance issues. The issue with that is they're usually not, 13 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:12,720 and a big part of the reason it's rare to see big performance jumps with new drivers these days 14 00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:18,560 is that devs work closely with NVIDIA while the game is in development. This isn't to say you 15 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:23,600 never see significant performance increases with new NVIDIA drivers, but it's not as common as you 16 00:01:23,600 --> 00:01:28,640 might think. Especially as tweaks to the drivers are often made with specific games in mind 17 00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:33,360 well before launch. Meaning that if you've updated your drivers with any regularity, 18 00:01:33,360 --> 00:01:38,720 there's a good chance your game will perform just fine even if you're not yet using the specific 19 00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:45,520 game ready driver for that game. NVIDIA has over an 80% market share in the discrete GPU market, 20 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:50,080 so it probably isn't a surprise that they have plenty of contacts at major game studios. 21 00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:55,120 There's actually a regular cadence where NVIDIA sends out pre-release drivers to developers on 22 00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:59,440 Mondays, and from there, there's back and forth between the game developers and the NVIDIA folks 23 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:05,440 to get things to play as nicely as possible before launch day. And while NVIDIA can't possibly test 24 00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:12,240 every single hardware configuration, they do have over 4500 combinations they test that go all the 25 00:02:12,240 --> 00:02:17,520 way back to 2012 as of the time this video was shot. In case you were wondering, this is how 26 00:02:17,520 --> 00:02:23,360 they figure out what the optimal settings for your PC are in GeForce Experience. But enough context 27 00:02:23,360 --> 00:02:28,480 already, what specifically about these drivers do they tweak before release? Rather than pushing 28 00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:34,160 drivers to squeeze every possible frame per second from an upcoming game, the general approach with 29 00:02:34,160 --> 00:02:39,520 game ready drivers is to ensure stability. For example, NVIDIA has outright disabled 30 00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:44,560 resizable bar support for certain games as it actually caused performance degradation with 31 00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:49,920 certain hardware configurations. Something that notably happened with Hitman World of Assassination 32 00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:54,960 where NVIDIA turned off the feature on systems with Intel CPUs to prevent a performance hit. 33 00:02:54,960 --> 00:03:00,320 But if you had an AMD CPU, NVIDIA left resizable bar on because it wasn't causing performance 34 00:03:00,320 --> 00:03:06,240 issues. That's not fair. Not only that, tweaks like this tend to be for an entire product stack. 35 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:10,160 So for example, if there's a problem with an optional feature that's being seen with a lot 36 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:16,400 of RTX 4080s, it's often switched off for the entire lovelace architecture instead of creating 37 00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:22,480 a situation where that feature has to get retested on a per card basis for every subsequent driver 38 00:03:22,480 --> 00:03:28,640 release. And of course, resizable bar is just one of a huge number of levers NVIDIA can pull. 39 00:03:28,640 --> 00:03:34,800 DLSS, other AI features and the actual CUDA cores themselves all need to be able to support a massive 40 00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:40,160 number of games, which is part of the reason modern GPU drivers have gotten so huge. Your new 41 00:03:40,160 --> 00:03:45,440 game ready driver has specific code describing how to behave when you're playing this specific new 42 00:03:45,440 --> 00:03:51,120 game. NVIDIA has actually tried to strip out unnecessary components to get driver sizes down 43 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:56,640 from around a Gigabyte to around 600 megabytes, which is still pretty gigantic. And with all of 44 00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:02,720 those variables, game ready drivers still can and sometimes do cause issues, even after extensive 45 00:04:02,720 --> 00:04:08,640 testing. This is part of the reason NVIDIA also offers studio drivers geared toward even greater 46 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:14,000 stability for content creators, which aren't pushed out as frequently as game ready drivers. 47 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:19,760 The issues that game ready drivers sometimes face are a possible point in favor of AMD's 48 00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:25,840 slower release cadence for its WHQL certified Radeon drivers and something that the two companies 49 00:04:25,840 --> 00:04:32,080 have publicly criticized each other on. Of course, AMD has also had issues with its drivers at times 50 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:36,800 with their anti-leg plus feature causing gamers to run into problems with anti-cheat software 51 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:42,800 in late 2023, standing out as an example. So slower cadences aren't necessarily a perfect 52 00:04:42,800 --> 00:04:48,960 solution either. And the industry's transition towards the DirectX 12 API has actually shifted 53 00:04:48,960 --> 00:04:54,720 more of the onus for getting things right towards the game developers and away from GPU companies. 54 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:59,360 The intent behind this is to give developers more control over their own game engines, 55 00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:05,760 but an unintended and common consequence has been that devs can violate the DirectX 12 spec 56 00:05:05,760 --> 00:05:11,120 when they actually believe they're following it. So I wouldn't expect those hotfix drivers that 57 00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:17,200 target a specific problem to go away anytime soon. It's not exactly like trillion-dollar companies 58 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:21,760 can't make mistakes. Hey, thanks for watching that whole video! Like it if you liked it, dislike 59 00:05:21,760 --> 00:05:25,200 it if you disliked it, check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions, 60 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:30,000 and don't forget to subscribe and follow. What are you doing here if you didn't like the video?